registered it at the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. seismologists say a combination of the concert sound system and all 70,000 swift fans dancing in sync produced the ground vibrations. thank you so much for joining me today. i'm fredricka whitfield. smerconish starts right now. never say never. i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. in september of 2019, joe biden was asked how many times he had spoken to son hunter about his overseas business activities. the then-candidate's answer was this. >> i have never spoken to my son about that. >> that has remained his answer until this week. on monday the white house press secretary was asked about this

issue, only this time her answer was different. she said that she had been asked the question a million times and the answer, quote, remains the same. but, in fact, the first time, instead of saying the president had never spoken to hunter about his business dealings, she said this. >> the president was never in business with his son. >> so on wednesday, phil wegman from real clear politics pointed out the inconsistency, but john pierr pierre insisted it was the same. >> i just want to clear this up once for all. the president has said he's never discussed overseas business dealings with his son, but the white house now says that the president has never been in business with his son. so why the updated language? which statement is true? or is it semantics and they are both true? >> as i stated on monday, when i was asked this question multiple times, nothing has changed.

nothing has changed. nothing has changed on this. and so you can ask me a million different ways on this question. nothing has changed. >> it's understandable that the president would like to redo his initial response from 2019. his outright denial never made sense. what parent does not discuss their children's work? especially when the parent is in the midst of a year's long effort to save that child from self-destructive behavior. and in this case, it's been well documented that in 2013 hunter biden accompanied vice president joe biden on a trip to china, where it was later discovered hunter was meeting with a business associate. as detailed later by josh letterman,nef the reporters who ntn the trip, he wrote, quot what wasn't known then was as he accompanied his father to china, hunter biden was forming a chinese private equity fund that associates said athe time was planning to raise big money, including from china. hunter biden has acknowledged meeting with jonathan lee, a

chinese banker and his business partner in the fund during the trip, although his spokesman the chinese business license that brought the new fund into existence was issued by shanghai authorities ten days after the trip with hunter biden a member of the board. the story continues to evolve and no doubt that's one reason why wednesday's plea agreement hearing was anything but routine. ten days ago irs whistleblowers gary shapley and joseph zeigler, testified before the house oversight committee. they were credible. zeigler will join me in just a moment. they testified under oath between 2014 and 2019 hunter failed to report or pay tax on perhaps $17 million he received from foreign sources. they said their investigation into the taxes had been thwarted and they had recommended charging hunter with far more serious crimes than what he had agreed to plead guilty to. now i hear some of you saying,

there's always tension between investigators and prosecutors, and that's true. but it's a fair question to learn whether this was that norm or the result of political influence. a day after the whistleblower testimony came senator chuck grassley's release of the fbi's so-called 1023 form, which memorializes claims from an fbi informant, doesn't provide proof that the allegations are true. cnn reported thebi document says an informant described a meeting where the ceo of ukrainian energy company claimed that he had made two $5 million payments to the bidens, though he dn't specify who received the alleged bribes. it cost $5 million to pay e biden and $5 million to pay another biden, he told the fbi informant at the 2016 meeting, in vienna, according to the document. the informant whom the fbi described as highly credible, has not been able to provide any further opinion as to the

veracity of the claims. and as phillip bump has reported in the "washington post," he has denied in the past ever speaking with the bidens. i hear some of you saying that's an unverified account. true. that doesn't mean all inquiry should end. just that it needs to be corroborated. on monday the oversight committee will conduct a transcribed interview with a devin archer, a former business associate of hunter biden. "the new york post" says she's previewed the testimony and he will say he's witness to calling his father in the midst of business dealings. and there's that whatsapp messa alleges hunter sent a ceo of a chinese fund management company in 2017. according to this testimony, the message said i'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the mmitment has not been fulfilled. tell the director that i wou like to resolve this now befe it gets out of hand, and now

means nit. the message goes on to say i will make certain that the m sitting next to mendvery person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. i'm sitting here waiting for the call with my father. the president has denied he was sitting with hunter when the message was sent. was hunter really with his father? who knows? maybe hunter was bluffing to impress his business associates, but it continues to beg the question of whether, contrary to a father never discussing his son's business, the picture is more complicated. and it was in this context that hunter went to federal court in delaware on wednesday for what was expected to be the routine acceptance by a judge of a plea agreement. hunter came ready to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and avert prosecution on a gun charge by enrolling in a two-year diversion program for non-violent offenders, but the judge said no.

why? she said the arrangement was unusual and it contained nonstandard terms such as broad immunity from other potential charges. maybe she's not ignorant of these other developments i have referenced and doesn't want to be in a situation where something else materializes that warrants additional charges that hunter would then be protected from by the plea agreement, as it was presented. and that's why she told both sides she felt like they were using her as a rubber stamp. judge noreika asked prosecutors whether the plea agreement would preclude hunter biden for charges related to foreign lobbying. the prosecutor said no, which caused hunter biden to say he could not agree to any deal that didn't offer broad immunity. reactions to all of this, the deal falling apart, democrats say this is the 2023 version of republicans, benghazi, benghazi, benghazi. and hunter is being singled out

for harsh treatment because of republican vendettas and a desire to distract from donald trump's third indictment. but ilene o'connor, who headed the justice department tax division from 2001 to 2007, wrote in the "wall street journal" that he was singledut for a differenreon. for favorable treatment. d that anyone else in this situation would probably go to prison. fomany years, it has been justice department policy to charge the most serious offense that can be proven, unquote. mr. garland changed that policy in december of 2022, the tax division manual still provides that prosecutors have specifically prohibited for permitting a defendant to plead to a misdemeanor when the elements of a felony can be proven. and according to the whistleblowers' accounts, that's what's happening here. i have said before that my gut tells me that any lapse of judgment on joe's part was motivated more by a desire to save a son from addiction than

an effort to line his own pocket. it was probably thrilled in having his son aboard air force two regardless of the purpose of making the trip because he knew the alternative could be that lifestyle that was exposed when the laptop was made public. all i know for sure is a terse reply of never doesn't cut it. the story is bigger now. it requires a full accounting by the president and the longer he waits, the more it's going to fester. and it turns out he is capable of change when it comes to acknowledging hunter's controversies. they acknowledged grandchild number seven for whom hunter had denied practice ternt parentity and is now paying child support. in a statement to people magazine, jill and i only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including navy. perhaps a similar clarification regarding hunter's business is in the offing. joining me now is joseph

zeigler, one of the agents who blew the whistle on the handling of this case. he published this opinion piece titled "a special counsel for hunter biden." thank you so much for being here. what is it that the tax manual required that was not done in this case? >> i appreciate you so much for having me. so in the tax manual, i pointed this out, that if you have a felony charge, if you have the evidence for the felony, and you also have the evidence for the misdemeanor, it's departmental policy that you have to charge the felony. the reason for that is inequitable treatment of taxpayers. like we stated before, the signed prosecutors, which included doj tax attorneys, all agreed to recommend the approval for the felony and misdemeanor charges. they actually called them slam dunk charges. >> in your op-ed, you characterized the doj's behavior as obstruction. here's my question.

do you think that there was concerted action, activity here by individuals in doj, maybe in the irs, concerted activity not to pursue the case aggressively, or more benignly perhaps, they are just afraid of rattling the cage of a high-profile family and defendants? >> the reason for me coming forward is this is all about preferential treatment of one person, and we're not treating taxpayers the same. so i guess i would point to the facts. the facts are that we did not follow the normal process to do things as a part of investigating this case. the judge in her hearing stated that we can't go back, we can't reinvestigate this case. i agree with her. what i'm asking her is we finished the tax investigation. we proved the felony tax counts for 2017, 2018, and 2019.

and i think it's utterly important that the statement of facts that was represented there in court, it actually stated that he miscategorized expenses. i don't know how anyone could consider a miscategorization the marmot, you are claiming you were blacklisted it, yet you are ducting that as a business expense on your tax returns. >> why is david weiss not saying that he was thwarted? i read the letters he sent to congress. he's not in sync with what you and shapley have offered. >> i have no idea what his motivation is. but what i can tell you is that his account of what happened is changing. gary, our account is not.

his letter stated -- his most recent letter to the house committee stated that he has the ultimate author in his venue, his jurisdiction of the district of delaware. and if he needs to go outside of that, if he needs to go to the central district of california or the district of d.c., that he needs some special attorney authority. that only came out after our whistleblower testimony came out. that recount of what happened only came out after that. so what is it? at the end of the day, i honestly thought that david was going to do the right thing for the right reason. we met with him so many times. he said you have proven this, absolutely, 2017, 2018, 2019, i agree with those charges. that felony and misdemeanor charges. i don't know how we came to where we charged only the misdemeanor in this case. >> final question.

i paid close attention to your testimony. you have come forward at the risk of great personal sacrifice. what was the tipping point? what was that which you saw and you said i've got to speak up? >> so i guess at the end of the day, i was brought up in a family that you have to do the right thing. i was brought up in a christian household that you have to -- at the end of everything, at the end of all this turmoil, you have to do the right thing. and i literally thought to myself that if this is going to change people's opinions of me, me coming forward, shame on them. this isn't a democrat or republican problem. this is, is justice blind? we are bringing evidence forward that justice is not blind. and people are given preferential treatment and we need to change from that, we need to learn from that so this doesn't happen again in the future. >> mr. zeigler, thank you for your testimony and thank you for

being here today. >> can i add one more thing? do you care if i add one more? >> do it, please. >> it's not too late. it's not too late for the department of justice to look at this and realize, guys, we made a mistake. it's not too late to -- i think that that would restore the faith in our justice system that it's working, that we actually care about charging the crimes, that we actually are holding everyone accountable the same across the board. >> well, i think that deserves a response. thank you for offering it. >> thank you so much. hit me up on social media. i'll read some responses throughout the course of the program. katherine, what has come in? why are you so obsessed with hunter biden? why not bring up the billions jared got -- if jared had been in federal court this past week and -- put that camera back to me because i want to speak

directly to this person. if jared had been in court this past week in wilmington, delaware, with what was anticipated to be a routine acceptance of a plea agreement that had fallen apart in the context of all of these other events, then today i would be sitting here and talking about jared. i'm obsessed with hunter. i feel sorry for hunter. i really do. i think i get the whole dynamic here as i've just laid it out. but i'm not going to ignore it. still to come, at this week's house oversight hearing on ufos, military pilots testified about their own firsthand encounters and an intelligence official accused the government of coverups. will we ever get the full story? check out this week's poll question at smerconish.com and answer. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? and last night's 13 gop candidates converged in iowa for a fundraising dinner, including front-runner donald trump, fresh off new charges in the mar-a-lago indictment. trump said friday he would not end his white house run even if

he were convicted and sentenced on any of the cases he's facing. i'll discuss with eli honig is just a second. >> donald trump is running to stay out of prison. and if we elect -- [ audience reacts ] >> i know, i know, i know, i know. i know, listen, i know the truth, the truth is hard. [ applause ] >> the day you get your clearchoice dental implants makes every day a confident day... a never-hide-my-smile day... a life-of-the-party day... a take-on-the-world day... a believe-in-myself day... a flash-my-new-teeth day. because your clearchoice day is the day you get your confidence back for good. a clearchoice day changes every day.

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after much anticipation, former president trump was subjected to more federal criminal charges this week, just not in the way we anticipated. while everybody was waiting for a january 6th fresh indictment, instead the charges from the first criminal indictment were expanded. here's what trump said last night at the iowa republican party's annual spring fundraiser. >> they want to weaponize the irs just like they weaponized the justice department and the fbi. by the way, if i weren't running, i would have nobody

coming after me. or if i was losing by a lot, i would have nobody coming after me. >> trump said earlier on friday he would not end his run for the white house even if he were convicted and sentenced in any of the criminal investigations against him. joining me to discuss is senior legal analyst elie honig. former federal prosecutor. great to see you again. other than trying to get the new defendant to flip, was there any need for jack smith to file a superseding indictment, or was he seeking to send a message? >> well, there was a substantiative difference in the second indictment. in addition to adding the third defendant, there are three new charges now against donald trump. the most important one, in my view, there's now one additional classified document. the 32nd document. there were 31 before. and this is crucial because this is the document that allegedly donald trump held up at bedminster when he was no longer president related to an iranian

war plan he showed to others. there's an audio tape of him discussing it. donald trump said there was no document. it turns out there was. doj charged that. there were also two new object construction of justice counts that relate to this not just to move the boxes around. that was already charged. but now it's charging obstruction on top of obstruction because the allegation is they tried to delete the internal surveillance video footage. so there is some new problems for donald trump beyond the addition of a new codefendant. >> where i'm coming from, i think that material would have nonetheless come into trial against donald trump. it strikes me that jack smith wants the public to know the whole story and therefore, reveals more than he needs to reveal. and something else. the dates, the times, the locations, the speech, what is left for there to be a factual dispute about?

it seems like here's the case. trump better hope he has a legal defense meaning presidential records act or the piercing of attorney-client privilege. roiz, he's got a real problem. >> i would agree with you. every time get a new indictment, i read it twice. first with my traditional prosecutor's eye. this one struck me as strong. then i read it again and say what's the defense going to be. not only do i think the defense will be a constitutional defense. the best defense is nonlegal. the best defense is for donald trump to get this thing pushed past the election and hope he wins, which he will dispose of this case. the other defense or hope for donald trump given the strength of the evidence here is the jury pool. remember, this case will be tried in florida. a state that donald trump won. even in the southern portion of florida, he lot 45% of the vote. and the reality is your jury in this case is going to have

minimum five or six people on it who voted for donald trump. jurors are supposed to put aside their political leanings. they are human beings. they will bring their belief into the courtroom. >> is there a practical concern that these prosecutors and i'm including alvin bragg, jack smith, fani willis, barricades are being elected in fulton county as we are speaking. is there a practical consideration they need to have that there could be a perception of piling on? that the members of the public who don't pay close attention are saying, wait, they charged him again and again. why is this all happening now when the new election is under way? >> that absolutely is a public perception and something that will persist. a couple things. first of all, if we see, as i think is widely expected, as i certainly expect, if by see an indictment coming very soon from doj, from jack smith relating to january 6th or the effort to steal the election, if fani willis then charges the effort to steal the georgia election,

that will really contribute to public perceptions of piling on. if jack smith has georgia covered, then why did fani willis need to pile on? and i think these charges are well justified. i think if he charges january 6th, it will be well justified. but why did it take two and a half plus years? why did it take us until after donald trump announced his canned aes candidacy? i believe doj could have charged these cases a long time ago. the fact that these are coming now as the election really heats up is going to only fuel that public perception. >> i feel the same way about willis' case in georgia. people are going to say this pertains to the perfect phone call that trump made in the aftermath of the last cycle. we're within three weeks of the first debate in this cycle. thank you for being here. always appreciate your expertise. >> thank you. up ahead, words i have never

spoken on cnn. nonhuman biologics. believers in ufos are seizing on some details revealed at this week's house hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomenon, but is there a there there? i'll speak to the expert, a harvard astronomer who recently dug up an extra terrestrial object from deep in the ocean to analyze its origins. i want to remind you to go to smerconish.com and answer the poll question. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? -see? -baby: ah. more likes? more tide. the more adorable? more tide. everyone's gonna need more tide. ♪ you're gonna need- more tide. it's a mess out there. that's why there's 85% more tide in every power pod.

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xfinity rewards creates experiences big and small, and once-in-a-lifetime. has the government been covering up signs of extraterrestrial life? this week three retired military veterans testified at a house hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, what are

commonly referred to as ufos, two a former navy pilot and commander had seen such objects themselves. they warned these present a national security problem and the government has been too secretive about them. the third to testify, former air force intelligence officer david grush had this exchange with representative nancy mace. >> do you believe officials at the highest levels of our national security apparatus have unlawfully withheld information from congress and cob verted our oversight authority? >> there are certain elected leaders that had more information. i'm not sure what they have shared with certain members, but certainly i would not be surprised. >> you've stated the government is in possession of potentially non human spacecraft. based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts, do you believe our government has made contact with

intelligent extra ter rest yells. >> something something i can't state. biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah. >> were they, i guess, human or nonhuman biologics? >> nonhuman and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program of people i talked to that are currently still on the program. >> the hearing received sharp criticism. in a linkedin posting by sean kirk patri w runs the all e n anomaly resolution office, kirk patrick wrote, i cannot let yesterday's hearing pass without sharing now insulting it was to the officers of the department of defense and intelligence, a community who chose to join, many are with not unreasonable anxieties about the career risks this would enil. my next guest has unique

credentials in this field, as poed in "the new york times," on january 8 of 2014, a fireball from space blazed lu rth's atmosphere and crashed into the sea north off the northeastern coast of new guinea. its location, velocity and brightness were recorded by u.s. government sensors and quietly tucked away in a database of similar events. last month harvard theoretical astrophysicist led an expedition that retrieved metallic fragments of the fireball off the western pacific sea floor. he joins me now, the head of the project and founding director of harvard university's black hole initiative. he's the best-selling arthur of extra ter rreshrial. do you believe the government is in possession of alien

spacecraft? >> either they have it or not, and if they do, i think it's inappropriate because it's just like stepping out to your back yard and finding a tennis ball that was thrown by a neighbor and coming back home and telling your family members nothing about it. basically they don't know that we have neighbors. that is inappropriate because this has nothing to do with national security, it has a lot to do with science. we would like to know if we have neighbors in our cosmic environment. >> what would be the motivation of the government trying to keep this under wrap? is it fear of panic, fear in the country that would be unharnessed? what? >> well, my guess, it has to do with the fact that they can't make sense of it and perhaps they consulted some corporations that have the benefits of being paid by the department of defense. otherwise, i cannot make any sense of it. so they might not have it. we just don't know.

we have to see the evidence. david grusch has a secondhand witness. he heard other people talk about it. 40 of them. and they told him about the programs, but we would like to see the actual evidence before we believe it. and, of course, i realize that going to the pacific ocean might be easier in terms of learning about the interstellar space than listening to politicians in washington, d.c. >> i'm going to ask you about your trip in just a moment. one follow-up. yes, you're right, he's a degree of separation, it seems to me, from those we would most want to speak to, but nothing stays secret these days. everybody writes a book. is it really practical to think that we could have alien spacecraft in our possession and someone who has touched it, felt it, seen it, wouldn't reveal that evidence? >> it's unlikely, unless the government is so incompetent so

it can't make sense, so it was tucked deep under secrecy with only a small number of people aware of it. i simply don't know until the evidence would be presented. but the good news is, as a result of the hearing on wednesday, david grusch promised to provide the details of the people who had firsthand experience with this program. so presumably there are representatives and we can get in touch with them and get to the bottom of it in the coming months. >> take me final 60 seconds and tell me, what do you think you retrieved from the pacific ocean floor a mile down? >> well, we used magnets to get some molten droplets from the surface of the object that crashed there and they were roughly a millimeter in size, and now we are studying them at harvard university using the best instruments that the world

has to offer. we're collaborating with uc berkeley, the booker corporation and hopefully within a month we'll know the composition and we can tell if this material is different than the one we have in the solar system and whether it's technological in origin. we can easily see the mortar droplets from computer screens, from stainless steel. just think of it as voyager colliding with another planet and burning up as a meteor. >> doctor, a social media reaction. i'm going to put it on the screen and i'll read it aloud in case i need your expertise to weigh in. if they did have alien craft, why would they hide it? go ahead and take a second crack at that. i've already raised the issue. >> well, only for commercial reasons or for having some advantage over adversaries. that could be imagined. but as we all know, even the

nuclear program was not very secretive. the russians knew about it. so i'm still agnostic about whether it's real or not until i see the evidence. and we better see the evidence because scientists are best equipped to make sense of it. >> right. we want it in your hands at harvard so that you can tell us what it really means. thank you, doctor, look forward to your book next month. >> thanks for having me. please go and vote at smerconish.com. while you're there, register for the daily newsletter. do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? still to come, are americans losing confidence in the military? we'll explore this alarming trend that's hurting u.s. institutions and get the reasons behind it.

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recent data from gal up on shows that confidence in american institutions on the whole is in decline. small siness is the u.s. institution in which we have the most faith, followed by the american military. but even faith in the military is on the wane. today 60% of americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. that's down 4% in the last year. a new book argues that even that level of support is actually hollow. peter fever is a political science professor at duke university. he's the author of "thanks for your service, the causes and consequences of public confidence in the u.s. military". peter, welcome back. if public confidence in the military is high, but it's hollow, does that suggest that some don't mean it when they say thank you for your service? >> i think that's the case. it's what political psychologists call social desirability bias, where you give the answer you think is the politically correct answer, but

it's not the one that you might truly hold. and if you use techniques to uncover what respondents actually think public confidence, it's probably 7 to 25 points lower than is captured in the polls. it's also important to note that some of the drivers of public confidence may be eroding. people have family and friends serving, but those numbers are dwindling as the world war ii generation has passed, and now the draft generation is passing. >> correct me if i'm wrong, but support by republicans is more in decline than support by democrats of the military. do you at tribute that to polarization and the way that now the military and claims of wokeness have become part of our political debate? >> yes. it's still the case that republicans on average have higher confidence than democrats, but the decline that

we've seen in the last several years is mostly a decline among republicans. and i think you can trace it, really, to september 2020. at the height of the campaign when then president trump started to attack the military, attack his own generals, and criticize them. that created sort of a permission space for republicans to look at the military in a different way, that's been echoed by other media personalities and other political leaders. now we've got this crazy phenomenon where the uniformed military is being treated like it's a combatant in the culture war. this politicizes the military and over time can cause a decline in confidence. >> and so is that what you're describing at the root of the recruitment problems that are being felt by all branches of the service? >> no, the recruitment problems are first and foremost a function of labor economics. there's great jobs available in

the civilian sector, all institutions are having trouble filling their hiring needs, and when that happens it's a tough environment for recruiting. but on the margins, this can matter for recruitment. high confidence is associated with recommending to others that they serve. so when confidence in the military goes down there's going to be fewer people saying, hey, yeah, go into the military. that's a good idea. and some of the polarized partisan critiques that you're hearing, particularly on the fringes of the republican party, those can have a really negative effect on people's willingness to serve. it's not the driver, but it's kind of an unnecessary self-inflict wound that makes it harder to recruit. >> i'm going to read aloud social media that came in so you know what it is and we'll respond together. katherine, what do we have on this subject? woke-ism destroys everything in

its path, including the military, says matthew. you would say what to him, peter? >> i would say we need to reconsider how we're treating the military in the culture wars. i think republicans need to stop targeting the military, stop accusing the military by name and military leaders by name on the one hand. on the secondhand, democrats need to stop hiding behind the military to defend controversial policies. if it's a policy set by the biden administration, have civilian leaders in the department of defense take responsibility for advocating for it. and then, thirdly, the military needs to talk about its values, but in a way that does not trigger the culture wars. so the military needs to recruit from all walks of life, but that doesn't mean they need to talk about dei or other issues that no longer mean to members of

america what that once meant. those terms have become politicized and the military should talk about values in a different way. i don't think the military is woke. there's just not a lot of evidence that members of the military operate the way, say, truly woke institutions and university campuses, for instance, operate. but the military does have to recruit from all walks of life and does have to forge those folks together, and that requires being sensitive to differences. so i think it's a mistake to call them woke. >> peter, good luck with the new book. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me. still to come, more of your best and worst social media commts and the final result. cannot wait to see this. today's poll question at smerconish.com, do you believe the u.s. government is in possession of alien spacecraft? . mm. ...a "chow down" day... a "take a big bite" day...

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